Let's try an experiment. Pick up a coin. Imagine that it represents
the object at which you are grasping. Hold it tightly
clutched in your fist and extend your arm, with the palm of
your hand facing the ground. Now if you let go or relax your
grip, you will lose what you are clinging onto. That's why
you hold on.
But there's another possibility: You can let go and yet keep REFLECTION AND CHANGE 35
hold of it. With your arm still outstretched, turn your hand
over so that it faces the sky. Release your hand and the coin
still rests on your open palm. You let go. And the coin is still
yours, even with all this space around it.
So there is a way in which we can accept impermanence
and still relish life, at one and the same time, without grasping.
Let us now think of what frequently happens in relationships.
So often it is only when people suddenly feel they are
losing their partner that they realize that they love them. Then
they cling on even tighter. But the more they grasp, the more
the other person escapes them, and the more fragile their relationship
becomes.
So often we want happiness, but the very way we pursue
it is so clumsy and unskillful that it brings only more sorrow.
Usually we assume we must grasp in order to have that something
that will ensure our happiness. We ask ourselves: How
can we possibly enjoy anything if we cannot own it? How
often attachment is mistaken for love! Even when the relationship
is a good one, love is spoiled by attachment, with its
insecurity, possessiveness, and pride; and then when love is
gone, all you have left to show for it are the "souvenirs" of
love, the scars of attachment.
the object at which you are grasping. Hold it tightly
clutched in your fist and extend your arm, with the palm of
your hand facing the ground. Now if you let go or relax your
grip, you will lose what you are clinging onto. That's why
you hold on.
But there's another possibility: You can let go and yet keep REFLECTION AND CHANGE 35
hold of it. With your arm still outstretched, turn your hand
over so that it faces the sky. Release your hand and the coin
still rests on your open palm. You let go. And the coin is still
yours, even with all this space around it.
So there is a way in which we can accept impermanence
and still relish life, at one and the same time, without grasping.
Let us now think of what frequently happens in relationships.
So often it is only when people suddenly feel they are
losing their partner that they realize that they love them. Then
they cling on even tighter. But the more they grasp, the more
the other person escapes them, and the more fragile their relationship
becomes.
So often we want happiness, but the very way we pursue
it is so clumsy and unskillful that it brings only more sorrow.
Usually we assume we must grasp in order to have that something
that will ensure our happiness. We ask ourselves: How
can we possibly enjoy anything if we cannot own it? How
often attachment is mistaken for love! Even when the relationship
is a good one, love is spoiled by attachment, with its
insecurity, possessiveness, and pride; and then when love is
gone, all you have left to show for it are the "souvenirs" of
love, the scars of attachment.
( Sogyal Rinpoche )
[ The Tibetan Book of Living and ]
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